As soon as he was gone, Alex would go after her.
It can’t end like this.
He stopped trying to pry the arm off his neck. Instead, he twisted just enough to land an elbow into Alex’s stomach. Then another and another until he finally relaxed his grip, just enough to escape. Elad powered himself back to his feet, fueled by desperation alone.
He heaved Alex over his shoulder. The man slammed against the floor, landing on his spine.
Elad scooped up the rifle, Skylar’s screams ringing in his ears. He aimed, not at Alex but at Ballard. The only way to end this was to get the remote.
But already the bastard was moving. He thumped his fist on a release next to a door. It slid open. Right before he disappeared through it, he tapped on his remote-control device again.
The clink of chains echoed throughout the room. All the locks that had been holding the prisoners in place released. The shackles were still secured around their ankles, but the chains were free. The prisoners still on their feet began to stir.
Elad looked at Alex with a sinking feeling of dread. There was a new fire in his eyes. The calm detachedness that had commanded him earlier had been replaced with newfound rage, radiating off his hulking form.
He let out a roar to rival a grizzly’s.
With his furious voice came the collective howls of the other prisoners. Human experiments turned into weapons. Their minds all reprogrammed at once for a singular purpose: maximum violence.
Skylar’s chain had come free from its lock. Metal cuffs still clung to her ankles, and the chain dragged from one of her shackles. But at least she could move.
Unfortunately, so could all the prisoners.
They shrieked and yelled, lashing out at each other with their chains and fists and teeth. There was no organization in their attacks, no clear target. Just anything they could reach.
As they fought, a sweltering wall of heat rushed through the room. The entire chamber seemed to shake. Thunder echoed through the metal bulkhead.
The chaos, noise, and flashing red lights threatened to overwhelm Skylar. Worse was the helpless anger at seeing these people tear each other part. Not because they were warring soldiers, because they were fighting for their country or their beliefs or even whatever makes a guy at a bar break a bottle and go after someone.
They hadn’t chosen this fight. They weren’t fighting for anything. Not even survival. The only thing driving them was those signals blazing through their brains. The Marine in Skylar railed against the injustice of it, even as she dodged blows and shoved would-be attackers aside.
In a matter of seconds, more bodies were already on the floor, dying from the wounds inflicted on them by other crazed prisoners. Those still standing trampled over the injured. It was a sea of blood and limbs and flesh.
Somewhere in that mad press of bodies were the three people she most wanted to reach. Ballard. Elad. And Alex.
The thrashing mob turned into a storm of voices and fists and faces. She had thought maybe she could sneak past them. But when the nearest prisoners turned her direction, gashes and wounds across their bodies weeping blood from the violence, she knew that wasn’t going to happen.
The trio turned on her, arms outstretched. Their lips curled back like rabid animals.
She used her chain to swipe at the legs of the closest prisoner, a woman in her forties. The woman sprawled forward. The second, a skinny man with stringy muscles, tripped when Skylar swung the chain again. The last of the rushing prisoners bent low, teeth grinding together, eyes bulging.
She didn’t have time to swing the chain around again, so she tripped the prisoner with her prosthetic leg.
The first woman was already pushing herself up to her knees. But instead of going after Skylar, she dove at the man lying on the deck next to her. They ripped at each other, pulling out chunks of hair and flesh.
Skylar skirted around the raging prisoners toward the door where Ballard had gone. She was about ten yards away when another man charged at her. She sidestepped his clawing hands. His frustrated screams rang out against the walls, and he skidded to a stop. Nose wrinkled in frustration and anger, he barreled toward her. Before he reached her, a woman pounced from the chaos, blood dripping from the corners of her lips. She tore into the man’s neck with a gruesome bite.
My God.
The man pawed at his neck, his eyes still bulging with rage. The woman tore his flesh away in a spray of blood.
Skylar was no stranger to battlefields. For better or worse, violence didn’t usually make her squeamish. But this was different. Her insides churned as an intense urge to vomit welled up in her.
Another pair of prisoners turned her direction, both with faces reddened by anger and spotted with blood. They started toward her. But another person burst through them, knocking them aside like grotesque bowling pins.
“Alex!” she said, her heart momentarily lifting at the sight of her partner.
He was a modern-day, clean-cut Viking dressed like a Navy SEAL, towering over the people struggling to get to their feet around him.
Her partner must have shaken off the mental hold of the Ring of Solomon. He was trying to save her, just like he was always trying to save everyone.
But when she saw the look in his eyes, she knew that wasn’t true.
He marched toward Skylar. Every aspect of him that she’d grown to know and respect—the cool professionalism, the bleeding-heart sympathy, his undying dedication to his country and his job—it had all been replaced by a fury she didn’t recognize at all.
“Alex, it’s me!”
He didn’t react. Skylar understood now how he must have felt when she’d been under the control of the Ring. Seeing her partner like this was worse than she could have imagined.
She swung her chain in a circle, ready to strike out with it. Could she stop him without killing him? Even if she injured him just enough to save her ass, she was condemning him to die at the hands of the other crazed prisoners.
Alex swung a fist at her. She juked to her left. The air rushed past her from the strike. Then another fist rammed toward her. She dodged, trying not to trip on her shackles. He attacked her with all the force of a runaway semitruck. Dodging and blocking and just barely staying ahead of him, she was losing ground, barely able to keep up. No amount of dodging and blocking would save her.
Eventually, he would land a crucial hit.
“Alex!” she tried again.
But his mind was a slave to the Ring. She knew what it was like to lose all semblance of reality. To be drowned by a tidal wave of fiery rage and the unstoppable urge to attack anything and everything.
She ducked under another blow that would’ve shattered her jaw. His fist glanced over her mask, nearly knocking it off. A chorus of yells erupted from somewhere behind him, followed by the heavy thump of bodies smacking against the floor.
Then gunfire.
She looked away from Alex for just a fraction of a second. Just to see if that had been Elad fighting to save himself from the horde of prisoners.
Alex was not so distracted. He lunged at Skylar. She dove away from him, scrambling over the floor. But this time, he grabbed the chain attached to her ankle shackle and reeled her in.
She fought for purchase on the smooth floor, trying to drag herself away. Her fingers scraped against the concrete, nails breaking.
But she might as well be fighting the pull of gravity.
So instead, she let him pull her toward him until she was in striking distance. She slammed her prosthetic foot against his fingers as hard as she could. She felt a slight twinge of sympathy when she heard a crack. But as much as she hated hurting her partner, she wanted to live. Because as she fought the man who was supposed to be her most trusted ally, Ballard was getting away.
She started to stand, drawing the chain away from Alex. Then she saw Elad running toward them. Blood covered his shirt and mask. A red bite mark was carved into the side of his neck.
He aimed the gu
n at her partner.
“Damn it, stop!” she said. “Just go after Ballard. Get the remote.”
“He’ll kill you,” Elad said.
Alex turned toward him, snarling.
“Just go,” Skylar said. Her chest heaved as she sucked air through the mask.
He hesitated. Alex stepped toward him, fingers outstretched—except for one dangling crooked from his hand.
Skylar whipped the chain at Alex’s shins and knocked him over. He turned his attention back to her.
“Go, Elad. Now!”
“I’m coming back,” Elad promised as he sprinted to the door where Ballard had escaped. Skylar pulled in the chain wrapped around Alex’s ankle, dragging him on his backside.
“Just stay down,” she hissed.
As Alex fought to free himself, another prisoner limped toward her. One of his ankles bent inward at an awkward ankle. Guy didn’t seem to notice he should be on the floor writhing in pain. He just wanted to sink his fingers and teeth into Skylar.
She rolled to the side and leveled her prosthetic leg hard into the man’s stomach, knocking him over. But as soon as he fell, another prisoner hobbled toward her.
Everything became a blur of action and reaction. She had to keep fending off the attacking prisoners. Doing her best not to kill them. Using their chains and hers, her fists, her feet.
She parried as many blows as she could. But she missed a few strikes. Couldn’t stop one woman with a broken arm from clamping her teeth onto Skylar’s good leg.
Skylar let out a yell, kicking the woman in the face. A well-placed heel to the woman’s nose sent her rolling backward.
Adrenaline only took her so far. And the beating she was taking, the unyielding crush of hell-bent prisoners was too much. Her muscle fibers were stretched to the breaking point, burning. Lungs felt like they were on fire, hot and hungry for oxygen. The gas mask wasn’t helping.
Eventually, Alex made it past her defenses, pushing her against a wall. She fought him, tried to shove him back. But he was too strong. He seized the chain on her ankle, forcing her leg up, making it so she could barely keep her balance.
Then he wrapped the chain around her neck and began pulling it tight.
His empty, angry eyes stared hard at hers. The eyes of a man who was completely lost.
She fought back, pressing her fingers between the chain and her neck, struggling to maintain room to breathe. If she could just hang on a little longer, just until Elad found Ballard….
Her muscles shook. She could barely prevent the chain from cutting off her breath for good. Barely keep Alex from cinching it tight enough to pop off her head.
If she died, Ballard would get away with his vials of the Ring of Solomon particles. His Archon buyers might be gone, but he would find new ones. More shady military contractors and mercenaries. Governments with no regard for human rights. Terrorist groups craving a new way to inflict untold horrors on innocent civilians.
More people would suffer like this. Their minds would be lost like Alex’s was now.
They would be turned against their neighbors. Their friends. Their families.
Skylar had never believed in demonic possession. Sure, she’d seen The Exorcist. But that shit was just Hollywood movie magic. But now, having experienced the Ring of Solomon, she was no longer so certain. The irrational anger. The pain. And the complete lack of control. If there were demons on earth, this was how it felt to be in their grasp.
Alex bore down on her. She pushed against him, tried to send an elbow into his side. Anything to stop him from killing her.
She had fought men Alex’s size before. Bigger, even. She knew she could take him. Especially when the anger hijacking his brain seemed to be relying on brute force instead of skill and technique. It would have been relatively simple to hit him in the throat and end this fight for good.
But she was holding herself back.
She recalled that promise she’d squeezed from him in the Dead Sea. That if she was infected with those particles again, he shouldn’t hesitate to kill her. Not if it was the difference between mission failure and success. Not if it meant protecting the world from this horror.
Now she was faced with that same choice. She had once thought it would be simple. The ends justify the means. The mission came above all else. In the back of her mind, she recalled the scent of scorching flesh, the long-ago screams that she tried to quiet in the dark of night. Skylar had made this call before. Had lived with the consequences.
Except this time, she couldn’t bear to go through with it. She couldn’t kill Alex.
The chain tightened around her neck. Bone and cartilage creaked and groaned, ready to crack. She hit Alex over and over. But pain was nothing to him.
Alex, come on, she thought hopefully.
There was no recognition in his eyes. Only a lust for carrying out the orders Ballard had given him.
Death would have to come for one of them.
-38-
Elad entered a space even larger than the prison chamber. Emergency lights glowed over enormous white plastic tanks nearly five times his height. Skeletal pipes connected the tanks to other metallic chambers that looked vaguely like refrigerators with their doors welded closed. The air felt electric, tingling his skin.
He gripped the stock of the rifle he’d stolen from a dead guard and searched the room for signs of Ballard. One way or another, he was going to stop his former partner. He just needed to find the man. He strained his ears, listening for footsteps. His breath whooshed in and out of the gas mask. The thrum of generators maintaining the machinery here rolled against his eardrums.
While he didn’t remember this place, the machinery around him made it clear where he was.
This was the manufacturing facility for the Ring of Solomon nanoparticles. The horrors he had witnessed, the erasure of his memories, the torture of those prisoners outside the facility—all of it had originated from this place.
No human deserved this kind of power.
He crept through the maze of equipment. Skylar was probably still struggling with Alex, assuming neither of them was already dead. And all those prisoners were killing each other. The only way he could stop the violence was either slaughter every single one of them, including Alex, to save Skylar or find Ballard and steal that remote he was using to activate the Ring of Solomon particles.
Skylar wouldn’t forgive him if he chose the former path. He wouldn’t forgive himself, either. He’d caused enough needless death. Just now, he had been forced to shoot his way out of the mob of prisoners. He tried to justify it. To tell himself that he had to make terrible choices for the greater good.
The greater good didn’t seem good enough anymore.
The sound of shoes against the metal floor sounded, just audible beneath the rumble of the equipment. Quietly as he could, he snuck around one of the tanks. He popped out the other side, ready to fire on Ballard.
All he saw was shadows.
He slunk forward, searching the darkness. His breath rattled through the filter in the mask.
Where are you?
Had Ballard already escaped?
A long rumble shook through the facility. This time, Elad wasn’t so sure it was thunder. Gray tentacles of smoke curled out from one of the ventilation shafts in the ceiling.
Maybe something had happened while he’d been in that hellish prison chamber. Maybe this place was going down.
Good. Let it sink to the bottom of the sea.
More screams echoed from the chamber where he’d left Skylar and Alex.
He had to stop this chaos. It was the least he could do to atone for the evil his former self had wrought.
Again, the walls of the facility trembled, metal groaning and protesting.
Maybe he could help it go faster. At the very least, he could draw out Ballard if the man was still in here, hiding, waiting to ambush.
Earlier, when he had come face-to-face with Alex, he’d seen the man’s tac vest was stuffed wit
h supplies. A detonator had spilled out during their fight, and Elad had realized the operative had come with a stock of plastic explosives.
Evidently, Alex had been intent on destroying this facility. If he couldn’t finish the job, Elad figured he would. And he didn’t think a man whose mind was under the influence of the Ring of Solomon should be in control of that many explosives anyway. Most of the people infected by the Ring became mindless as zombies, but Elad wouldn’t put it past the American to surprise him.
He’d taken the plastique and detonators. Now, he just needed to use them. Somewhere in the back of Elad’s mind, he still knew how to set these weapons up just like he knew how to breathe.
He let his fingers do the work, connecting detonator caps to explosives, then placed them around the equipment that seemed crucial to the manufacturing process. He had to guess, choosing machinery somewhat at random. But with the amount of explosives he was placing around the facility, it wouldn’t matter. This whole place would be turned to molten slag.
He set another explosive next to a growling generator. That’s when he heard footsteps again.
Behind him.
He spun, twisting up his rifle. A silhouette flashed between the tanks, and he fired. Bullets punched into the white plastic. Gas vented out of each new hole in sprays of white mist. The emergency lights flickered over the unmistakable sparkle of particles filling the air.
His mind told him to hold his breath. To pinch his eyes closed. He fought against instinct. So long as he kept his mask on, he wouldn’t fall prey to the particles.
More movement at the far end of the chamber. He fired again. Bullets punched into the bulkhead and deck, sparking.
But Ballard had disappeared.
Where did you go?
Return fire exploded at him from another corner.
Elad swiveled, firing into the dark. But just as quickly as Ballard had appeared, he vanished into the shadows again. Footsteps pounded, the direction lost in the din of the generators and machinery.
“Face me, Ballard!” he yelled in frustration.
Smoke began choking the ceiling, flowing in through vents and shafts.
Demon Mind (Vector Book 2) Page 33